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George Armitage, who co-wrote and directed the Alec Baldwin-starring Miami Blues and helmed another 1990s black comedy, Grosse Pointe Blank, starring John Cusack, has died. He was 83.

Armitage died Feb. 15 in Playa del Rey, California, his son, Brent Armitage, announced.

As was the case with many others, Armitage got a big career boost in the early 1970s from legendary B-movie producer Roger Corman at New World Pictures.

Armitage also wrote and directed MGM’s Hit Man (1972), starring Bernie Casey and Pam Grier, and United Artists’ Vigilante Force (1976), starring Kris Kristofferson and Jan-Michael Vincent. Both those films were produced by Roger’s brother, Gene Corman.

Miami Blues (1990), based on the series of Hoke Moseley books by author Charles Willeford, featured Baldwin as Frederick J. Frenger Jr., who steals the badge and gun of a veteran cop (Fred Ward as Moseley) and embarks on an outrageous crime spree with a hooker...

George Armitage, the director known for Hit Man (1972), Miami Blues (1990) and Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), has died. He was 82.

The writer, director and producer died last Saturday, Deadline has confirmed with his former agency Gersh. A cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Born Dec. 13, 1942 in Hartford, Connecticut, Armitage moved to Beverly Hills with his family as a child. After majoring in political science and economics at UCLA, he found himself breaking into the film industry, working in the mail room at 20th Century Fox while waiting for his real estate license to come through.

Within a year, Armitage was an associate producer on the ABC soap Peyton Place. “It was an incredible experience,” he recalled in 2015.

“There was a producer there named Everett Chambers who would work on a number of films with John Cassavetes, he was usually helpful,” said Armitage. “This was just at the time when the fortysomething...

Lee Grant, the Oscar-winning actress (“Shampoo”) says she decided after her win to try to direct since good roles for older women were limited. It turns out that was about the halfway point of her 98 year (so far) life. What followed was a narrative feature (“Tell Me a Riddle”) and several documentaries, including “Down and Out in America,” which won an Oscar.

When we last ran our list of the oldest living feature film directors in late 2022, where Grant stood was a mystery. Since her breakout in William Wyler’s “The Detective Story” (1951), her first nomination, her year of birth was unclear. But recently she has clarified that that she was born in 1925. That makes her, to the best of our knowledge, older than any of her peers.

Below are listed the 25 oldest. Since our most recent list, Norman Lear, Robert M. Young (both of who briefly were the oldest...

The Twilight Zone series stands as the benchmark for weird, wonderful, and creepy TV viewing. Many shows and movies have tried to duplicate its moralistic mysteries with varying results. Night Slaves is a charmingly odd TV movie not only cut from the same cloth, but with ties to it as well.

Originally airing as an ABC Movie of the Week on Tuesday, September 29th, Night Slaves duked it out with Hee Haw/To Rome with Love on CBS and the NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies and had no issues with either; the telefilm, while heading down that sci-fi road, managed to lacquer a few coats of soapy romance on as well, hitting all of the prime time sweet spots.

Let’s peruse our TV Guide and see what’s going on:

Night Slaves (Tuesday, 8:30pm, ABC)

A man recovering from a near fatal car accident ends up with...

Mubi in the United Kingdom will be showing four films by John Cassavetes beginning with Too Late Blues (March 9 - April 8), followed by Husbands (March 16 - April 15), Gloria (March 23 - April 22), and Love Streams (March 29 - April 28). “Life is a series of suicides, divorces, promises broken, children smashed, whatever.” — Robert, Love Streams“Love is a stream. It’s continuous. It doesn’t stop.” — Sarah, Love Streams I love a good punch. Not the kind Robert Mitchum could land, or the kind Errol Flynn once received, though the mythmaking breeziness of another era’s gossip columns ensures even these retain an ageless charm. I mean the verbal kind, the hit-you-in-the-belly kind. A gut punch. Putdowns are an art: cadence is a weapon, pithiness a bullet. Brevity bruises: it’s not so much what is said as everything that isn’t. The best knocks hurt precisely because, no matter how brutal they get,...

Stars: Bobby Darin, Stella Stevens, Everett Chambers, Nick Dennis, Vince Edwards, Val Avery, Marilyn Clark, James Joyce, Rupert Crosse | Written by John Cassavetes, Richard Carr | Directed by John Cassavetes

Ghost (Darin), is an idealistic musician who would rather play in the park to the birds and at other small time gigs than compromise himself by going big time. For his band mates however, a little bit of fame wouldn’t go a miss. But when Ghost falls for a girl called Jess who he meets at a party (Stevens), she comes between him and his band members. Splitting off from the group and abandoning the life he once knew, he sets off on a search for fame and leaves his dreams behind.

Too Late Blues is another entry in the Masters of Cinema Series, a film made in 1961, filmed in black and white and directed by John Cassavetes. From the title,...

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!

Nurses‑make‑out saga is passable fodder for drive‑ins, with mild nudity values for ogling by the soft‑core male contingent. Rating: R.

This sequel to the recent and fairly successful The Student Nurses again mixes TV soap opera plotting, youth clichés and sex, but this time out the formula fizzles. Exuding a general aura of familiarity, the dreary New World Pictures release will have to settle for lower‑berth dual billing in those situations where its forerunner paid off. Best prospects are in drive‑in slottings. The writing‑directing chores herein were entrusted to George Armitage, a Roger Corman protégé (he wrote Gas‑S‑S) making his directorial bow. Apart from one or two mild attempts at parodying the genre,...

A periodic round up of interesting and notable books about film, including biographies, histories, critical assessments, and more.

I have to confess from the off that, apart from Daniel Day-Lewis’ typically spellbinding performance (if that’s even the right word for what he does) and the meticulous detail and cinematography that made the film a joy to look at, Stephen Spielberg’s Lincoln left me rather cold; perhaps if I had read Lincoln: A Cinematic and Historical Companion (Disney Editions, distributed in the UK by Turnaround www.turnarounduk.com) beforehand, my viewing experience would have been richer and more rewarding.

The book opens with earnest forewards by Spielberg and producer Kathleen Kennedy, and is thereafter divided into two sections, each in two parts. Part One, ‘Players on the Stage of History’, features full page colour photos of the film’s main players in the style of 19th century portraiture, which...

Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev Andrei Tarkovsky, Audrey Hepburn, Clara Bow Movies: Packard Campus May 2012 Schedule Friday, April 27 (7:30 p.m.) Solaris (Magna, 1972) An alien intelligence infiltrates a space mission. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. With Natalya Bondarchuk and Donatas Banionis. Sci-fi psychological drama. Black & White and color, 167 min. In Russian and German with English subtitles. Saturday, April 28 (7:30 p.m.) To Kill A Mockingbird (Universal, 1962) A Southern lawyer defends a black man wrongly accused of rape, and tries to explain the proceedings to his children. Directed by Robert Mulligan. With Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Brock Peters and Robert Duvall. Drama. Black & white, 129 min. Selected for the National Film Registry in 1995. Thursday, May 3 (7:30 p.m.) The Little Giant (Warner Bros., 1933) A Chicago beer magnate about to lose his business with the repeal of Prohibition, moves to California and tries to join society's upper crust, but his gangster origins prove tough to shake.

They're Happy To Be Hooked

By Agnes Eckhardt Nixon

Chief writer of the current serial Another World and creator of One Life To Live, which starts July 15

New York Times

July 7, 1968

Time after tedious time, when critics suffer an aridity of fresh, inventive phrases with which to denigrate a film, play or book, they fall back on "soap opera"; it has become the classic cliché of derogation.

But the critic cannot be singly criticized when his attitude is shared by a good part of the television industry itself. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, for example, did not simply fail to give an Emmy to any soap opera: by having no award category for them, it failed to recognize their existence.

Of course, after viewing the recent fiasco of the Emmy awards, it may well be considered a mark of distinction to have been ignored by this group.